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10/24/2004: "Election Forecasts"
For the political junkies: my three regular election prediction sites:
- Election Projection: Updated once a week using the most complex formula, based on such things as recent preference polls and approval ratings. Updated daily for those not as cheap as myself. While he is good enough to separate Maine into districts, he does not contemplate Colorado dividing electoral votes. He has Bush up 296-242, no toss ups.
- Electoral Vote Predictor: Updated daily, based solely on polls, he makes no distinction between polls of registered voters and polls of likely voters. Has lots of sub pages, including Senate predictions. He has Bush up 254-253 with 31 electoral votes too close to call.
- Geekmedia presentation of Tradesports: Tradesports is a market of election predictions. One can buy or sell a share of "stock" of Bush-Wins-Ohio. If Bush wins Ohio, the person that sold the stock has to pay the person that bought the stock $100 (?); If Kerry wins, no more money changes hands. As of the end of Sunday 10/24 EST, the bid price for Ohio was $53.60; the market slightly favors Bush to win Ohio. There is talk that this marketplace has been manipulated to make Kerry look good.
Geekmedia takes the Tradesports prices and uses them to predict a winner. I would quibble that since the default setup uses the bid price instead of the average of the bid and ask price, the results are skewed in Kerry's favor. In the author's defense, the page is configurable. I would also quibble about the effect of commissions, if I were energetic enough to research it. Still, very cool. This page has Bush up 271-243, with 24 unprojected electoral votes.
For the record, these three sources disagree on six states:
- Florida (one tossup, two Bush) 27 electoral votes.
- Hawaii (one tossup, two Kerry) 4 electoral votes.
- Minnesota (two Kerry, one Bush) 10 electoral votes.
- New Hampshire (two Kerry, one toss up) 4 electoral votes.
- New Mexico (two Kerry, one toss up) 5 electoral votes.
- Ohio (one tossup, one Bush, one Kerry) 20 electoral votes.
Where the sources agree, Bush is up 241-228, with 269 needed to tie and 270 needed to win.
